Messier of the Southern Sky

摘要

Every Northern Hemisphere deep-sky observer will at some time have perused French comet hunter Charles Messier's (1730-1 817) famous eighteenth-century catalogue of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae. While Messier did indeed discover 1 3 comets, it is ironic that he is best remembered for his list of over 100 fixed, faint and fuzzy celestial objects that could be confused with them, which he compiled with friend and assistant Pierre Méchain (1744-1804).